Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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In some Christian churches, when the minister takes the offering plates from the altar table and presents them to the congregation, he says those last words -- words of Jesus: "Freely ye have received, freely give." Over the main door of the old classroom building at Drew Seminary, where I went to school, on the inside (where the students would see them as they left the building) were the same words: "Freely ye have received, freely give." Not a bad message for young men and women going forth into ministry! The words have broad meaning, but the occasion for Jesus' saying them was a very specific one. He is teaching and healing in Galilee, his home territory. (Galilee is the pretty part of Israel, up north, greener than the rest of the place.) And he is, apparently, becoming overwhelmed by the crowds. Matthew says he saw the masses of people "as sheep without a shepherd" and had compassion for them. (The Greek word for "compassion," here, is stronger than our word. It means more than pity. It means "the pain of love.") He cared deeply for them and felt for them deeply.

Anyway, Jesus seems to realize that if there is this crowd in this town, coming to hear him and be healed, and if there is another such crowd over the next hill, in the next town, and so forth, he will never get to all of them. "The harvest is plentiful," he says to the disciples, "but the laborers are few." So he makes some laborers! He gives authority to the twelve, and sends them out: "proclaim the good news….Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Freely ye have received, freely give." And later they come back, with marvelous tales to tell.

The words, "Freely ye have received, freely give," are more than instructions to missionaries setting out. They express the very essence of Christian ethics. (Ethics, you remember, is the study of morality, of right and wrong. It asks the practical questions, "How shall I live?" O.K., Jesus loves me. O.K., Jesus came out of the ivory palaces, and walked and talked, and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven (and thereby, somehow, made provision for my sin), and, O.K., he will come again. But, in the meantime, while I wait, what shall I do?) That's the ethical question. How do all my theoretical beliefs about Jesus make me different in the way I live? Or do they? It is the very question debated by all the U.S.bishops this week in Dallas: Does our faith in Jesus make a difference in the way we relate to children and minors, in the way we behave sexually toward any other person, in the way we live up to our religious vows? Ethics, for Christians, is "where the rubber meets the road." What do we need to do (not to think, not to believe) - what do we need to do to please God?

For all the world, prior to Jesus, the answer was: "Obey the rules and pay your dues" -- living "by the law," Paul called it. The laws of the gods were different for different peoples, and they evolved, of course, with time. Sometimes the emphasis was on sacrifice, sometimes on public worship, sometimes on private devotion, sometimes on things to do (like giving alms and reading scripture), sometimes on things not to do (like drinking, smoking, gambling). But the main idea was always the same. There is a price to pay for God's favor. God levies a spiritual tax on his people in the form of dos and don'ts. There is a huge Form 1040 somewhere in heaven, and every line has to be completed. It's what we owe. It's what we have to pay. And, as Paul pointed out, in this scenario, the tax man is always after us.

But with Jesus it's not what we owe, it's what we give. Freely. Because God has given freely to us. And that's a wonderful difference! It's the difference between a heavenly policeman and a Heavenly Father.

But Jesus was probably not engaged in deep theology here, when he said to the twelve, "Freely ye have received, freely give." He was laying out a strategy for church growth (which we would do well to hear today), and he was teaching his disciples what it is that makes the gospel live. The growth of the Christian Church was an amazing thing. A few decades after Jesus died there were Christians everywhere. In less than three centuries Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire, and this in spite of its illegality for most of that time. It grew one by one - Christians going out as missionaries, as these twelve went out, witnessing to others, by their words and by their lives, that the Kingdom of God was, indeed, at hand.

The old story tells of a farmer who had done something to please the king, and the king, wanting to reward him, asked what he would like. The farmer took out a chess board, said he was a humble man, so for his reward he would like just a few grains of wheat. If the king would put one grain on the first square, and two on the next, and four on the next, and keep doubling like that, the modest farmer, not wanting to ask for too much, would be satisfied. The king agreed and told his grain stewards to proceed. You know what happened. By the time they had reached the thirty-third square, the farmer had received 8,000 bushels of wheat. By the fiftieth square the total was one billion bushels (equal to the annual wheat production of the United States today). There was not enough wheat in the entire kingdom! At the last square, the sixty-fourth, the farmer was owed 7.4 trillion bushels, two thousand times all the wheat that is produced in the world today. Exponential growth always surprises people. And that is the way the church grew: one person told two, and two told four, and four eight, and so forth. Until the whole world was a different place. And that is the way the church grows today.

One lesson for each of us, in this, is never to think of ourselves, or our contributions, as too small. A little bit of leaven in the loaf makes it grow very large. A tiny mustard seed becomes a huge tree. One word for Jesus, one good deed in his name, advances the kingdom, and we never know the end of its influence. "For not with swords loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums, with deeds of love and mercy (little things) the heavenly kingdom comes."

Sharing the Gospel, giving freely as we have received freely, keeps the message alive and fresh. In Brownies our girls sang, "Love is something if you give it away you end up having more." The Gospel, which is the essence of love, is something if you give it away you end up having more. And the Kingdom only grows as we share it. We don't want to hug our salvation. If we do, we end up with a stagnated, ingrown kind of faith. We want to pass it on. George Buttrick said the Gospel is the breath of life, but there are some people who take one deep breath and try to hold it forever. And, of course, eventually they die. A healthy Christian takes the Gospel message in, lets it out, and takes it in again. And, thus, he truly lives by faith, for the breath of life stays fresh within him. Love is something, if you give it away….(sing).